F1 ends ESPN era with more audience milestones
ESPN’s eight-year chapter covering Formula 1 closed in typical fashion, yet not without delivering fresh viewership milestones.
Last Sunday’s season finale, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, drew an average rating of 0.8 and 1.53 million viewers on ESPN, marking the largest audience ever for the race and surpassing last year’s previous high of 1.0 million. While Nielsen’s methodology has expanded over the past year—adding out-of-home viewing samples to cover all markets and incorporating “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes alongside the traditional panel—this 53 percent jump cannot be fully explained by those changes alone.
Max Verstappen won the race, while Lando Norris claimed the season title, and that event also served as the final Formula 1 race broadcast on ESPN networks. Beginning next season, F1 will shift to Apple TV under a five-year media rights agreement.
Abu Dhabi stood out as the 16th of 24 races this season to reach a new viewership high and the 21st to show a year-over-year increase, though the noted methodological adjustments introduce caveats. Three races did not rise in viewership, including the most-watched event of the season, the Miami Grand Prix (2.17 million), which lacked last year’s NBA playoff lead-in that helped drive a record audience for F1 (the 2024 Miami GP) due to stronger cross-sport lead-in and other factors.
The complete 2025 F1 season averaged 1.32 million viewers on ESPN networks, up 20% from 2024 (1.10 million) and marking the highest total for an F1 season on U.S. television. The previous peak was 1.21 million in 2022, though that figure came from an era with less comprehensive data collection and fewer out-of-home views, suggesting it might still rank highly under comparable conditions.
Over the past five seasons, dating back to 2021, those years rank as the five most-watched on record, each surpassing the long-standing 748,000-viewer mark set in 1995. Since ESPN began its current F1 run in 2018, that first season averaged 554,000 viewers—an improvement over NBC Sports’ prior-year average of 538,000.
Formula 1 Viewership Trend, 2012-Present
Compared with other motorsports series, F1’s audience was only slightly smaller than IndyCar, which averaged about 1.36 million viewers. It’s important to note that IndyCar’s rights deal with FOX included exclusive broadcast coverage in its initial year.
As expected, NASCAR Cup Series viewership remained higher, averaging 2.48 million across a mix of broadcast (FOX and NBC), cable (FS1, TNT, USA) and streaming (Amazon Prime Video). F1 notably surpassed the NASCAR Xfinity Series, which, like IndyCar, aired exclusively on broadcast TV and averaged 1.05 million on CW.
Average viewership for motorsports in 2025
The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix figures may represent a rare instance of a publicly accessible F1 viewership estimate in the near future. Apple’s involvement means Nielsen may not measure its sports properties uniformly, with occasional viewership figures released at league executives’ discretion, as seen with MLS coverage managed by Apple.
Nonetheless, heading into the Apple partnership, F1’s viewership reached levels never before recorded by Nielsen and stood competitive with its domestic peers.
Author note
Jon Lewis has chronicled sports media developments daily since 2006 as the founder and principal writer of Sports Media Watch. He can be reached through the publication’s contact page or via X (Twitter) or Bluesky profiles.
